The Golden Box
by S. Faith
Summary: Mark knows her all too well: she can't help peeking. A Christmas quickie, so to speak.


**The Golden Box**

By S. Faith, © 2012

Words: 1,827

Rating: T / PG-13 (a bit of swearing)  
Summary: Mark knows her all too well: she can't help peeking.  
Disclaimer: Very, very much not mine.  
Notes: Happy Christmas to those who celebrate; Happy Holidays to those who only enjoy the spirit of the winter season, the ending of the dark part of the year.

Totally unbetaed (in the sense that I did not do a second read-through) and probably full of mistakes. Wrote this in the space of a few hours today. :)

* * *

She could not believe her eyes.

The tree, which had been decorated only last night, now sheltered beneath its branches what appeared to be a golden package, roughly large enough to hold a football with room to spare. With eyes wide in amazement and curiosity, she moved forward to get a better look, though it was difficult to tell as she still felt a bit bleary with sleep. Creeping closer she realised the package was not golden at all.

The cage enveloping the package, the lock securing it, was actually what was golden.

She narrowed her eyes. It was a week until Christmas morning. This was his doing, the bastard.

"Mark!" she yelled, knowing the tenor of her voice would startle him, and hoping it did. She heard him come racing down the stairs. A second call of his name brought him to the front room of their house.

"Darling," he asked, his voice slightly alarmed indeed. "What is it; what's the matter?"

She pointed accusingly at the gilded gift. "What is the meaning of this?"

"Oh."

"Yes, 'oh'," she said.

"Well…" he began. "I've spent enough Christmases with you now to know that you cannot resist peeking in on your present." As he spoke a slow smile spread across his lips. "So I've had to take precautionary measures."

She narrowed her eyes. _Bastard_, she thought, and decided in that moment to beat his system.

…

_18 Dec: Attempt to pick up gift and shake it thwarted; is chained to tree w/ v. short chain. (Though is v. light.)_  
_19 Dec: Cannot poke knife through holes in cage. Holes too small._  
_20 Dec: Tried pencil. Broke lead._  
_21 Dec: Sit and stared at him with large puppy-style eyes. Resolve not broken._  
_22 Dec: Have sacked bedroom looking for key. Rifled through all drawers, pockets, etc. Not to be found. Mark is practically criminal mastermind._

The entry for the 23rd was the hardest to read.

_23 Dec: Attempt to seduce cage key out of him abysmal failure. Seduction worked, but post-coital fuzzy headed state did not yield results. Namely, key. Or actually revealing what present is._

Now it was the 24th. There was no way she could wait another day (unless he was feeling generous and let her open it at midnight, which she doubted). She would have to employ drastic measures. It was time to find the tools: screwdriver, pliers, hammer.

Gingerly she stepped into the garage, flicked the lights on, and scanned the room to try to locate the toolbox quickly before Mark knew she was doing it. The garage was, of course, spotless—except for the corner in which she stored some of the things from her old flat—so she found it across the room, and went directly towards it.

She crouched down in order to flip open the latches on the toolbox, only to find that it too had a lock on the front of it, this one a numerical combination lock. She looked up; the power tools were also in a locked cabinet. Then, from behind her, startling her, she heard: "Darling. What are you doing?"

She stood quickly, and spun around to face him. "You know bloody well what I'm doing. Why have you put a lock on this? What if I needed a hammer in an extreme emergency?"

"Like now?"

"As a matter of fact, yes," she said. "That's not fair, locking up the tools."

"Darling, the tools have been under lock since we moved in together," he said with a smirk. "I have a vested interest in you not using them without supervision."

Her mouth dropped open in her horror. "Give me a little credit!"

He folded his arms across his chest. "Shall I remind you of the table you destroyed with the drill?" he asked smugly.

"_That_ was an accident."

"And I rest my case." He chuckled. "Come on, let's have breakfast. If you're a very good girl, I'll let you open it before dinner to—" He stopped short. "Who am I kidding?" He winked. "You won't be able to be good."

She ground her teeth. "You're lucky the tools are under lock and key."

"Midnight, then. Acceptable?"

It was better than morning, she supposed. "Fine."

…

After a delicious Christmas Eve meal of pizza (with the fuss of hosting Christmas dinner the following day, she thought the request eminently reasonable, and he seemed to agree), she sat placidly on the sofa as they watched _It's a Wonderful Life_ together. Her eyes repeatedly drifted to the clock, though it seemed time was creeping forward at a glacial pace.

"All right, I think you've been patient enough."

His voice startled her from the sound sleep she seemed to have slipped into—must have been the wine, and the carbs, she thought—and she sat properly upright with a smile. The time on the clock now read fifteen minutes to midnight.

"Really?" she asked brightly.

"Yes," he said with a sweet smile. "I'll just be a moment and then that gift is yours."

She clapped her hands together and bounced in place. "Hurrah!"

To her surprise he went in the direction of the garage. With her curiosity fully piqued, she decided to follow him, and she found him standing in the centre of the garage with his fists on his hips, staring, oddly enough, at the corner of the garage in which her boxes of things were stacked.

"Mark?" she asked. "Something wrong?"

He turned to look at her. "What happened to the box labelled 'Summer clothes'?"

She looked down, furrowing her brow, wondering about the apparent non sequitur. "Um, it and a few others went with Shazzer to Oxfam. Remember she came and picked up some things?"

He went as pale as a ghost. "Oxfam?"

"Surely you have no objection to donating," she scoffed. "So what about the caged gift?"

"No, of course I don't object to donating, darling," he said. "I had… hidden the key in that box."

After a moment of a blank stare, she burst out into a laugh. "You almost had me for a moment there," she said with a grin… which faded as she realised he was not laughing. "It's funny, okay? You win. Get the key and—"

"I'm not joking," he said, his voice gravelly, which was a sure sign that he was serious. "I put the key in a box I thought you'd have no need to poke into until the summer."

Both hands came up to her mouth without her realising they had done so. "Oh my God!" she gasped. "How on earth do we get into it, then?"

His gaze turned to the locked toolbox, then back to her. "I suppose it will have to be with a little brute force." He went over and opened the toolbox—he did the combination so quickly she didn't take note of what it was—and then pulled out pliers, a wrench, a hammer and a screwdriver. "This should be all we need." With a devilish grin he looked to her, and she returned that grin in full.

Perhaps she shouldn't have poured them more wine, but it certainly made the frustrating process a bit more fun, as they chiselled, pried and worked loose the hinges on the cage, after breaking its tether to the tree, and an unsuccessful go at the lock itself; he had warned her the lock was burglar-proof, and whacking a flat-head screwdriver with a hammer into the lock did in fact fail to pop it. He did, however, teasingly compliment her on the attempt: "If we ever need to burgle something, I'll know to call you straightaway."

The last bit of the hinge finally came free, and the gift came springing out, hitting the carpet with a little bounce. She noted he had been unconcerned about roughly handling the gift, so she reasoned that whatever it was, it wasn't breakable. "Success," he said.

"Hurrah!" she said.

"Well, you've worked for it, now claim your prize," he said with a smirk. "I hope after all that, you like it."

She offered a pout. "It's not a football, is it?"

He laughed. "No, darling. It is not a football. Just open it."

She tore off the paper (an act that always made him cringe a little, Mr Peel-back-the-sello-carefully that he was) to reveal a rather generic-looking box. She opened the top of it and found an envelope, and another, smaller, wrapped box inside. She looked up to him, confused. "It's not going to be a series of wrapped things, leading me down to a fancy cloisonné thimble or something, is it?"

"I had no idea you had an interest in decorated thimbles…" he teased.

"Humph," she said. "Which should I do first?"

"Box."

She did as suggested, and was delighted by what she found there: a beautiful golden negligee set of the finest, sheerest silk she had ever seen. "Well, I suppose I shan't be entertaining guests in this," she joked with a wink. Then she turned to the envelope, and mused to herself, "Wonder what on earth this could be?"

"A cheque," he said in perfect deadpan. "Wanted to remind you of your old grannies from days gone by."

"Oh, pfft," she said, then opened the envelope—and didn't quite know how to make sense of what she saw. "Bahamas?" she asked, looking to him once more.

"Yes," he said with a grin. "A lovely week in tropical sun to break up your dreary winter."

She squealed and threw her arms about him, kissing him passionately, in lieu of a verbal thank you, at least until she broke away breathlessly to say it properly. "Mark, this is fantastic; thank you so much."

He was content to wait until the morning to open his own gift, and she was glad for it.

…

_Early January_

"Mark, can you fetch me the larger leather carrier bag? I need something sturdy to put some books and magazines in."

"Where is it?"

"It may be in the cupboard under the stairs. Not sure though; don't use it much."

"Of course," he said, then departed, as she held up her bikini and winced a bit; she knew all of that holiday eating was going to come back to haunt her sooner rather than later.

A few minutes later she heard him approaching, and for some odd reason, he was chuckling to himself. She turned to see him enter with the carrier bag held by the strap with one hand and holding a bit of clamshell plastic packaging with the other. "What's that?" she asked.

"This was inside. I must have used this… and you aren't going to believe it," he said, still chuckling as she held up the packaging: it was from a lock, and fixed to the plastic was—

She began laughing too as she took the packaging in hand. "The other key," she said, helpless with giggles as she did.

_The end._


End file.
